Chargers stadium week in review: Playoffs

Raiders owner Mark Davis laid out a timetable for his team to get a new stadium. It's "yesterday," he said. He also suggested that stadium could get built in Oakland, in Santa Clara or in Los Angeles.
— Associated Press

Raiders owner Mark Davis laid out a timetable for his team to get a new stadium. It's "yesterday," he said. He also suggested that stadium could get built in Oakland, in Santa Clara or in Los Angeles.
/ Associated Press

Does this sound familiar? "With the first pick of the 2004 NFL draft, the San Diego Chargers select Eli Manning."
— Associated Press

Does this sound familiar? "With the first pick of the 2004 NFL draft, the San Diego Chargers select Eli Manning."
/ Associated Press

All the stadium stories you missed since my last roundup while you were trying to figure out just who it is that Raiders owner Mark Davis looks like…

In San Diego, fans watching Eli Manning march through the playoffs (what if!) continued to come to terms with the fact that the new coach, general manager and stadium will be the old coach, general manager and stadium.

As word spread that the Chargers would spend at least one more season at Qualcomm Stadium, which turns 45 this year, speculation grew that the team bound for Los Angeles (assuming there even is one) would be a franchise other than the Bolts.

Locals continued to fret about the coming apocalypse, however. A blogger at boltsfromtheblue.com called it “GO time!” and said: “As with Norv Turner and A.J. Smith, it appears that 2012 will be the make-or-break season for the Chargers and the city of San Diego.”

Some perspective: It's also a make-or-break-season for the world, according to the Mayans.

Reading their own tea leaves, columnists around the country saw fit to sharpen their pencils and teeth, and bite into the story that is the National Football League’s potential return to L.A., either to AEG's planned Farmers Field or to Majestic Realty's stadium proposal 20 miles outside the metropolis in City of Industry.

One of those columnists was the Orange County Register’s Mark Whicker, who weighed in to remind everyone that Farmers Field “remains a name without a place.”

Whicker wrote:

There never has been anything inevitable about the NFL's return to Los Angeles, either to Philip Anschutz's L.A. Live/Convention Center site or to Ed Roski's sidehill lie in the City of Industry.

There always has been a lot of wishful journalism about this, because no one in the hinterlands can believe our area can rationally function without the NFL.

Even when Houston had an existing stadium and L.A. did not, some professional typists were shocked when the NFL incubated the Houston Texans and not the Los Angeles Figments.

In Santa Clara, a move to stop the San Francisco 49ers from relocating and building a new stadium is still meeting some resistance.

Santa Clara's city attorney has ruled that voters can’t block the stadium by referendum, but an organization set on that end is still collecting signatures. A spokeswoman for the group said it has about half the valid 4,700 signatures that would be required for a referendum.

No word on how the 49ers' big win over the New Orleans Saints will affect that effort.

Back to Los Angeles, if the Chargers don't play there, then who?

The list of leading contenders includes the Oakland Raiders, the St. Louis Rams and the Minnesota Vikings. In short:

Vikings brass say their lease has ended and a relocation is possible, though a court battle over the unplayed dates at the Metrodome following the roof collapse in 2010 could prevent the team from leaving for another year.

The Raiders’ lease at the O.co Coliseum is up after 2013.

And the Rams’ lease could let them leave the Edward Jones Dome at the end of the 2014 season, if not sooner.